How to start an internet radio station

What does an internet radio station actually need?

Audio travels along a short chain. A source (your music library or your DJ set) goes into an encoder, which compresses it into a stream. The encoder sends that stream to a stream server, and the server hands a copy to every listener who presses play. If any link is missing, nobody hears anything. The most common stream server is Icecast, free server software for streaming audio. It carries MP3 and Ogg streams, among others.

If you want to see how MAWCast splits this work between you and the platform, the introduction to MAWCast covers it.

Step 1: What will your station be?

Decide three things before you touch any software: what the station plays, who it is for, and which hours are live and which are automated. You do not need a mission statement. A sentence is enough: "house music for our Discord server, live on Friday nights, AutoDJ the rest of the week."

The split between live and automated hours has a practical effect. Automated hours are filled from your library, so they decide how much music you need and how much storage it takes. A station that is automated 20 hours a day needs a rotation deep enough that regular listeners do not hear the same tracks every afternoon. See how much room your library gets on MAWCast.

Step 2: Do you need a licence to play music online?

For commercial recordings, usually yes. A recorded song normally carries two separate rights. One covers the composition, meaning the songwriters and publishers. The other covers the sound recording, meaning the labels and performers. In most countries each right is licensed through a different collecting society. What you need depends on the country you and your listeners are in, because music rights are territorial.

What it usually does not depend on:

• The size of your audience. A small station still broadcasts to the public.
• Whether you make money. Non-commercial is not the same as licensed.
• Owning the files. Buying a track, or subscribing to a streaming service, does not give you the right to broadcast it.

Collecting societies differ by country. A few examples, for illustration only: PPL in the UK represents performers and recording rightsholders; SoundExchange in the US collects digital performance royalties for recordings; GEMA in Germany represents composers, lyricists and music publishers; SGAE in Spain represents authors and music publishers. The societies that cover your territory can tell you what applies to you. Ask them, and keep their answer in writing.

Without a licence you can still broadcast your own recordings, music released under a licence that permits broadcast, and production libraries licensed for that use.

MAWCast does not provide music licences and has no arrangement with any collecting society. A hosting subscription is not a licence, on MAWCast or anywhere else. See what a MAWCast subscription does and does not cover.

Step 3: Where will your stream be hosted?

There are two honest routes.

• Self-hosting. You rent or own a server and install the stream server yourself: Icecast on its own, or a complete suite such as AzuraCast, which is free and open source. You get full control, and you also do the updates, backups, security and repairs.
• Managed hosting. Someone else runs the servers. You upload music, build a schedule and go live; the host keeps the stream up.

Self-hosting is the better choice if you already run servers, want full control over the software, and have time to maintain it. Managed hosting is the better choice if the server is the part you would rather not think about. If you are weighing the two, our comparison of MAWCast and AzuraCast goes into detail and says when AzuraCast is the better pick.

Whichever route you take, compare these things:

• How many listeners can connect at the same time.
• The bitrate for live shows and for AutoDJ.
• Storage for your music library.
• Whether AutoDJ and a schedule are included.
• Whether you can connect the DJ software you already use.
• What happens to your files and history if you stop paying.

MAWCast is a managed service. You can connect your own Icecast-compatible encoder, and every plan includes AutoDJ, a schedule, a public station page and a permanent history of your broadcasts. Plan limits are in the cost section below and on Icecast hosting with MAWCast.

Step 4: Getting your music ready

Collect the tracks you want in rotation, check that they are tagged, and upload them. MAWCast accepts MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A and FLAC, up to 150 MB per file, which is about an hour at 320 kbps. An MP3 is kept exactly as you uploaded it. Any other format is converted to an MP3 at 320 kbps shortly after upload, and AutoDJ plays it once the conversion has finished. The details are in which files to upload.

Tags matter more than people expect. The title and artist that listeners see come from the file's tags. A file without tags shows its file name as the title and no artist. You can fix tags in the media library, and the change shows the next time the track plays. See where the track titles come from.

What bitrate should an internet radio station use?

On a hosted service, the plan decides what listeners receive, not the file. On MAWCast, AutoDJ airs at 128 kbps on Starter and 256 kbps on the other plans. Every track is re-encoded to that rate on its way to air. Your plan's live quality is 128 kbps on Starter and 320 kbps on the other plans: set your encoder to it. An encoder sending more is re-encoded to that rate on its way to air. Files stored above the rate you broadcast use storage without reaching listeners.

Step 5: How does the station keep playing when you're not live?

With AutoDJ. Without it, a station is silent whenever nobody is at the desk, and listeners who find it at those times leave. AutoDJ plays your playlists in order or shuffled. A queue lets you put one track next, such as a promo before a show, without changing the rest of the day. Read more on how AutoDJ fills the gaps or on the AutoDJ feature page.

Live shows and AutoDJ have to share one address. MAWCast gives each station two mountpoints: the public one that your encoder connects to, and a hidden one that AutoDJ plays on. The public mount falls back to the AutoDJ mount. When you connect, listeners hear you. When you disconnect, they are moved back to the rotation. Nobody has to reload anything. The full explanation is in why your show takes over without listeners reconnecting.

Step 6: How do you go live from your own software?

Any Icecast-compatible encoder can connect with the same connection details: server type Icecast 2, a hostname, a port, a mountpoint, the username source and a password. On MAWCast you copy them from Broadcast Access in Control. The password is the one value to keep private, because anyone who has it can broadcast as your station. See the values every encoder asks for.

MAWCast Studio, our Windows app, connects to your station without typing any of these values: sign in, pick your station, press GO LIVE. It is free with every plan and the recommended way to broadcast. The programs above also connect directly with the details from Control.

Two practical points. First, use a wired connection for anything that matters, because Wi-Fi is the usual cause of dropped broadcasts. Second, your upload speed has to stay above the bitrate you send, all the time: a 128 kbps stream needs more than 128 kbps of upload for the whole show.

Step 7: Where will people listen?

On a page with a player. On MAWCast, every station gets a public page at <station>.mawcast.com. It shows the player, what is on air and the next show from your schedule, plus your own text and links if you add them. See the page listeners land on.

If you already have a website, you can embed the station's player there as well. See the web player. Many listeners will also use the stream address directly in their own player, so share that address as well as the page.

Step 8: How do you schedule shows and tell people when you're on?

Put your shows on a weekly schedule. The schedule tells your page what is coming up, and it tells regular listeners when to tune in. On MAWCast a show can repeat every week. A show with playlists takes over AutoDJ for its time slot. A show without playlists is a live slot: it announces that someone plans to be on air, and you still go live from your own software. If two shows overlap, Control names the clash and lets you move the new show or keep both. Plan your week with the station schedule.

Reminders go out in Discord, not by email. Each show can send up to two: 30 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day before it starts. MAW Assistant delivers them to anyone who has asked to hear about the station. If your listeners already gather on a Discord server, that is where the reminder will reach them. See reminders in your Discord.

Step 9: How will you know anyone is listening?

Measure two separate things. Stream listeners are connections to the stream itself, from any player. Page visitors are people who opened your station page, and some of them never press play. The two numbers are different, and a host that reports one as the other is giving you a flattering figure, not an accurate one.

On MAWCast, Control shows current listeners, peaks, averages and a listener timeline while you are on air, and keeps them as permanent historical analytics. Every broadcast is also kept as a session: who was on, when it started and ended, and what played. See how MAWCast counts live listeners.

How much does it cost to start an internet radio station?

The costs fall into four groups:

• Hosting. A managed plan, or a server you pay for and run yourself.
• Music licences. These depend on your country and your societies' tariffs, so this guide gives no figures.
• Software. Free options exist: Mixxx and BUTT cost nothing. VirtualDJ's radio-server broadcasting needs a paid Pro licence.
• Equipment. Optional to start. A computer and a decent microphone are enough for a first show.

MAWCast plans start at €1.99 a month for Starter, which has one station, 100 listeners at once and 128 kbps. Air is €4.99 for 500 listeners at once, and listeners are unlimited from Broadcast at €9.99. All prices include VAT. Paying yearly gives you two months free.

There is no free plan. A 3-day trial of Starter is available with a verified payment method, one trial per card. See what a plan changes or the full pricing.

Start your station

When your music is tagged and you know your live hours, you can create the station, upload the library, switch on AutoDJ and connect your encoder in one sitting.

Create your station. The 3-day Starter trial needs a verified payment method.

Written by the MAWCast team.